So I have this problem when I'm arguing with people where I lose my temper and say things less skillfully than I otherwise might. (Some of you may remember, "Please, 3,000 people. We HAVE 300 million more.")

Exchange I just had on FB about the impending addition of gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability as protected categories under federal hate crimes law:

Brian, ignorant friend of a friend:

Perhaps because laws against harming the innocent are already in place. The legislation passed by Congress implicitly acknowledges one of two things: 1) It was legal before today to assault gays; 2) It is worse to assault gays than heterosexuals. The most cogent and consistent advocate for gay rights in America, Andrew Sullivan, opposes hate-crime legislation for this very sound reason.

Me:

Brian - these laws relate to membership or perceived membership in categories including heterosexuality, just as non-discrimination laws do. If I pretend friendship with a straight man, rob him, pistol whip him, and leave him on a fence to die of exposure, well, obviously there's still a question whether it was a hate crime (was I in it for the money or because he was a fucking breeder who disgusted me too much to allow him to live?), but this law applies just as much to that situation as to Matthew Shepherd's.

To your first point: this law is not just about murder. Most hate crimes are not murders. Part of the point is to further criminalize actions that terrorize a whole community (e.g., burning a piece of wood in a black person's yard is just arson, unless it's a cross; spraypainting a wall is just vandalism, unless I write "I'm going to kill every kike I see tomorrow" in a Jewish neighborhood) and, furthermore, to ensure that there is federal recourse if local authorities fail to adequately pursue the perpetrators of a crime.

I feel I made my point, but I perhaps could have done so in a less inflammatory way. Oops.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, I had no desire to pay airfare and spend the time going to my high school reunion. At this point I am no longer what I could call incredibly close to any of my high school friends; those that I've kept in touch with at all (ie, have spoken/chatted with in the last 5 years) are probably limited in number to a half dozen, tops.

On the other, I want to see pictures of everyone looking aged and/or fat, for spiteful and/or self-centered reasons. I am also curious about who was gay, though of course those people may be less likely to attend high school reunions. I may be a case in point - it's not as though high school was hell for me, but the base level of anxiety and exclusion that suffused my time in high school probably didn't make me any more likely to think, "I can't wait to go back and see people!"

Nonetheless, your 10 year high school reunion only happens once and I sort of regret missing it.

Obviously one could only get away with it if one's entirely life (or at least an entire room) were fashioned in this way, but I COVET COVET COVET this desktop:

( Steampunk desktop )

I decided after seeing previews for and reading reviews for 9 that I should better understand steampunk and decided to start at wikipedia. That image is featured in the article and oh my god I kind of want it hardcore.

U.S. Colleges Are Failing in Getting Students to Graduate

I love the study the NYT is reviewing (at least, based on the description, as I haven't read it). Graduation rates ARE too low, and helping students persist and graduate despite financial and other challenges SHOULD be a priority. But parts of the article make me twitchy:

About half of low-income students with a high school grade-point average of at least 3.5 and an SAT score of at least 1,200 do not attend the best college they could have. Many don’t even apply. Some apply but don’t enroll.

They could have been admitted to Michigan’s Ann Arbor campus (graduation rate: 88 percent, according to College Results Online) or Michigan State (74 percent), but they went, say, to Eastern Michigan (39 percent) or Western Michigan (54 percent). If they graduate, it would be hard to get upset about their choice. But large numbers do not.

As though going to a school where a higher percentage of students graduate in itself makes you more likely to graduate. To the extent that graduation rates are the result of supportive student services, yes, but of course that's not the driving factor. The reason the University of Michigan has high completion rates is because students attending the University of Michigan are, without looking at any statistics to back up this statement, almost undoubtedly whiter, richer, from better high schools, from families with more educated backgrounds, less likely to be parents, and less likely to be working through school than are their counterparts at Eastern Michigan University.

The students that don't match this description who go to the University of Michigan to get the best education they can are more likely to be part of the 12% who don't finish. Moving students from disadvantaged backgrounds to better schools may increase their odds of finishing - though it's also likely to reduce overall graduation rates for those schools - but I think there are reasons to expect some students to be more likely to succeed at institutions where their classmates are more like them and where student services are designed with nontraditional or struggling students in mind.

And in conclusion, I hate it the inability of media to report research findings in a way that doesn't impart causality to correlational research findings. But I should be used to it by now.

I'd never read or seen The Taming of the Shrew. Oh, I saw 10 Things I Hate About You once, and it was cute enough. Heath Ledger as a bad boy = just as hot as when he's a cowboy, after all. Anyway, I saw it performed last night at The Shakespeare Theatre Company's "Free for All" event.

I kept waiting for the other (progressive and/or feminist) shoe to drop, but no, really, the play seems to be about how abusing your shrewish wife will make her love you. Maybe I missed subtext or something? But hey, all I had to do was stand in line for an hour for free tickets, so there's that. And overall it was a funny play and amusing as performed, though the very modern styling and "OMG Bianca is SO HAWT" interludes were more than a little disconcerting to me (though the outfit made of translucent bubbles = fabulous). But I still find myself a little stunned by the plot. I'm not one of those people incapable of appreciating something in its historical context, but I do find it a bit shocking in a contemporary performance.

Also, just a little bit of corporate sponsorship. It was very New Burbage, only with Target instead of Cosmopolitan-Lenstrex. Until the curtain came down for the start of the show, I fully expected the Target symbol to be projected onto it with laser lighting at any moment.

BP discovers 'huge' oil field in Gulf of Mexico

Does anyone know how mineral resources in international waters are dealt with legally? Like, does BP have to pay someone (who?) for this privilege? Hmmm.

How Serfdom Saved the Women's Movement (by Caitlin Flanagan)

The article's from 2004, but I just read it for the first time. Boiled down, it amounts to: the only reason women were able to enter the professional workforce in large numbers while still having children is because of the ready availability of poorly-paid domestic workers, often immigrants. There aren't any easy solutions suggested, and much of the article consists of sarcastic attacks (my favorite kind) on authors who've written about the so-called struggle of the professional mother. For example:

For someone in Ann Crittenden's position, seeing a string of zeros on her Social Security statement can be a "dramatic reminder" that society does not value and honor her hard choices—leaving The New York Times! exposing herself to snubs at cocktail parties!—as highly as it should.

Interesting reading at a moment when more and more of my peers are married and/or having children, and when so much of my work is devoted to issues of "work-life balance," a feminist priority that Flanagan criticizes for ignoring the plight of poor women and children.

So I was already sad at missing jaundicedferret's Star Trek party, but this really takes the cake (pun intended):



They played a recording from the appropriate episode when they cut 'her.'

Here are the rest of the party pics.

Jon is my hero.

One friend just posted a (friends-only) post about how she's going frugal to save money toward her goal of buying her first home. And so I started to write a response, but it's more of a post on its own. She's looking to buy, another friend in Chicago is looking to buy, and I spent a day at a friend's house for game day recently. I wildly covet his house. I'd rather it be next to a Metro station and not in a suburban subdivision, of course, but in general I'm just wildly jealous of the space, the nice furnishings and design, and the space.

So in response to this wild coveting of real estate, I recently looked around at real estate in DC. There's a newish 2 bedroom condo across the street from my current building that's selling for something like $350,000. There are some beautiful houses near me for in the $400k-$900k range. Needless to say, even if I had the savings for a down payment (I don't), there is almost no way for me to buy anything worth buying in DC. The largest loan for which I could qualify _might_ allow me to buy a 2 bedroom condo, but the payment itself would be substantially more than my current rent, possibly out of my realistic price range.

So other than depressing me, the main thing thinking about real estate has done for me has been to initiate a "how can I maximize the conversion of the money I have into happiness?" sort of train of thought. Would LASIK make me happier? What about renting a bigger place, where I could have an extra room as a study/guest room? Or living in a different neighborhood - perhaps one with more dining or entertainment options? What about a new computer? Or an iPhone like device? New furniture? Art for my walls? Painting some or all of my apartment? What about that exercise bike for Operation Dessert Shield?

I have considered all these ways of spending money at some point. I have not come up with any real insights into converting money to happiness. There's a massive psychological literature about happiness, where it comes from, and the general inability of humans to know what will or will not make them happy ahead of time (see: consumerism), so maybe I should look into some of it in more detail. It's interesting to contemplate, and it's probably one of the most useful things to actually spend time thinking about, at least if happiness is your goal.

So, it's best if you play WoW or are already a fan of The Guild (online series based loosely on WoW), but The Guild has a music video that I love: Do You Wanna Date My Avatar?. I think it's WAY too catchy and also hilarious.

"Grab your mouse and stroke the keys / Here in cyberspace there's no disease."

So apparently the CEO of Whole Foods has raised eyebrows and tempers after coming out against Obama's health care reform and suggesting a variety of libertarian reforms instead.

This is good timing, since I was just talking about Whole Foods with someone this weekend. Maybe about this? I don't recall, though I referenced this article, "What Smells at Whole Foods?", which largely focuses on Whole Foods' anti-union practices.

Incidentally, one of the bloggers quoted in that Washington Post sum-up, Radney Balko, talks about how great Whole Foods employees have it, since "Last I saw, the company’s lowest wage earners make $13.15 per hour." And yet glassdoor.com (which I just discovered, and the idea of which I highly approve of) show's that Whole Foods' wages for entry-level workers range from $8-$15 per hour, with an average of between $10 and $11 per hour. Good fact-checking, Balko and the Washington Post. Seriously, the number of times people in this country get away with saying factually untrue yet easily checked things really irks me.

In America, Crazy Is a Pre-Existing Condition

I would find it somewhat comforting to see polls of craziness comparing other countries to the US. I mean, like, the percent of people who believe utterly insane things, such as "The government has an active program in which children are kidnapped, experimented upon, and turned into cyborgs." Or, "the President is actually Kenyan and his birth certificate doesn't really exist and it's all a big conspiracy." Or similar. Surely there must be conspiracy theorists and right-wing crazies everywhere, right? And is our media really more likely to pay attention to them than the media in other countries?

Speaking of ignorant and stupid people, the Post has an article today about the Pit Bull ban in Prince George's County (suburban Maryland and significantly blacker/poorer than Montgomery County). While the ban itself makes me mad, the fact that there are so many stupid, ignorant people out there who breed/buy pit bulls (and other dogs) and then train them to be aggressive makes me much angrier.

But then, at least the army isn't participating in a campaign of terror, murdering gay men, like is happening in Iraq. So there's that point of pride in my country: woo! Government militia/police forces don't actively participate in hate crimes! Well, not most of the time anyway.

NYT: Many people's morning routine is now online

This is kind of old news for at least some people in my generation, but I guess it may be news if it's pretty much everybody now. Certainly I think even my mom is very wired these days - I'm waiting for the Facebook friends invite - and she's never held an email/internet-centric job like many people.